Amazon likely to cut 15% jobs in new round of AI-driven layoffs: Report

Employees in other divisions involving Amazon’s core consumer business could also be affected by the layoffs, the report said. The exact number of employees that will be let go and when the layoffs are expected to happen is still unclear.

The latest round of job cuts at Amazon comes amid a deteriorating job market for those in the tech sector, with several big tech companies looking to leverage AI tools in order to shrink headcounts and lower costs. While many AI-related layoffs are being framed as ‘restructuring’ efforts, big tech firms are simultaneously ramping up investments in data centres and compute to stay ahead in the AI arms race. Amazon, for instance, has earmarked over $100 billion in capital expenditures this year to build out its cloud and AI data centres.

In June this year, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had announced in a memo to its 1.5 million employees that, as the company embraces AI tools across the organisation, it will ultimately “reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains” over time.

“Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company,” he wrote.

At the same time, Jassy also made a point to note that there won’t be room on the bus for everyone: “We expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”

Jassy added that generative AI will ‘change the way our work is done,’ and said the company will eventually ‘need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.’ “We expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company,” he further said.

Taking over as CEO from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2021, Jassy oversaw the largest layoffs in the company’s history roughly two years ago, when Amazon cut at least 27,000 corporate jobs.

Earlier this year, Amazon also laid off employees in its consumer devices unit, Wondery podcast division, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Meanwhile, the e-commerce giant also announced this week that it will be hiring over 2,50,000 seasonal employees across its warehouses and logistics networks in the US ahead of the holiday season.